


Two-Way Street

by jdjunkie



Category: Stargate SG-1/Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s05e11 The Lost Tribe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-04
Updated: 2010-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-11 11:21:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdjunkie/pseuds/jdjunkie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel's in the infirmary (again) and Jack's pissed (again)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two-Way Street

**Author's Note:**

> Episode tag to First Contact and Lost Tribe, wherein Daniel gets to go to Atlantis and things Do Not Go Well.

Daniel does not believe that it is possible for his hair to hurt. But it does.

So do his teeth, his nails, his eye sockets and his blood. Staff-blast damaged shoulders, legs nicked by bullets and Terminator-style blade-slashed stomachs have nothing on this. This is something else.

This is too busted up … too near death again … too fucking hurt to think straight, see clearly or rail at the universe adequately.

He hurts. And he can’t squint past that. He’s squinting because it even hurts to wear his glasses for any length of time. The world looks kind of nice when not viewed through corrective lenses, he decides. The blurry edges give everything a mellow, unthreatening vibe. Mellow is good.

Jack isn’t mellow.

Jack is fucking furious.

And Jack is at the SGC.

Daniel is sleeping in the infirmary when Jack arrives overnight from Washington. Daniel has been Earth-side approximately eight hours. Drugged and suffering from a heavy cold, he’s been dreaming disquieting dreams of hovering exo-skeleton suits that blare out Ride of the Valkyries, while meditating Asgard collectively chant for the souls of their departed brethren.

But even those dreams are preferable to the others: dark, dimly-remembered flashes of his body melting into a twilight existence.

It is something of a relief when he fights his way to awareness to hear Jack’s low voice somewhere in the background.

_Just the eight hours, eh, Jack? Can’t stand to be away a second longer._

Jack’s voice is rising and falling in a trying-to-be-hushed way. Mostly rising. This is the voice that whispers, “I love you so fucking much, Daniel,” so broken and loving, and “Christ, fuck me, harder, _harder_,” so desperately harsh and yearning. Now, it simply sounds tired and pissed and exasperated.

Dr. Lam is doing her best to explain and reassure in that measured, almost clinical way she has; Daniel thinks “bedside manner needs attention” might feature regularly in her six-monthly evaluations. But that calm, not quite condescending manner only serves to crank up Jack’s annoyance further still.

Daniel is resting on his side, facing away from the infirmary entrance where the increasingly heated conversation is taking place.

_Oh, Jack. Don’t take it out on Lam. The blame doesn’t lie with her._

Deciding that discretion really is the better part of valor, he pretends to be asleep. He isn’t quite ready to deal with Jack.

He isn’t quite ready to deal with any of it.

He listens to the ongoing exchange: Jack angry, Lam defensive.

“Well, how long, exactly, _is_ he going to be in here?”

“A few more days at least. I insist. It was a massive electrical discharge. There are no outward indications or burns, thanks to the protective suit. But he was thrown clear of the source with some force, according to Dr McKay, and it would have involved powerful muscular contractions. There could well be latent chest or abdominal pain. He requires careful observation.”

Daniel can almost feel Jack wince, physically and emotionally.

“Is he in any pain right now?” Jack is trying to sound more reasonable, but without actually apologizing. Daniel recognizes the MO.

“He was. Very likely still is, although I’ve increased his medication above what he was receiving in Atlantis. But he’s sleeping and I’d like him to stay asleep for as long as possible. His body needs time to heal. And if you do anything to prevent that, I will not hesitate to have you removed from my infirmary. Sir.”

A short silence follows, broken by a slightly more conciliatory but still pissy, “Does the surname Fraiser appear anywhere on your family tree?”

Jack jingles the small change in his pocket, something Daniel knows he does when he feels uncomfortable, anxious.

“He’s going to be all right. Right?”

“I hope so.”

“Doc?”

“Yes. I believe so.”

“Good. Right. I’ll just … When he …”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

“Right.”

Daniel hears the soft tap of Lam’s heels as she walks away, then a long, slightly shaky, exhaled breath. Finally comes a whispered, “Fuck, Daniel. Just ... I’ll be back. Don’t, you know, die or get worse or anything. You hear me?”

Daniel listens hard into the silence, waiting to hear Jack’s footsteps, but for a long time there is nothing. Jack is still there, watching, willing, possibly praying, although who knows what Jack’s relationship with the Almighty is like these days. Daniel wants to reach out, say, “Hey, Jack. I’m awake. Come on over and let’s get the inevitable reaming out over with.” But he can’t. He isn’t ready. He needs all his armor in place.

If he calls to Jack now, he’ll give in to the fear that has been gnawing at him since the threat of a radiation-filled room lodged with a terrifying thud in his brain.

Daniel falls asleep, still listening for Jack’s soft tread to take him away.

He awakes alone.

Eyes closed, Daniel replays the overheard conversation between Jack and Lam but finds he can’t concentrate. His headache is worse, and images of arcing electrical current and renegade Asgard and flashes of an earlier time, of terror and pain and a voice that speaks of admiration rather than love, intrude.

He is tired and fearful and empty.

Maybe this is where it all ends. Maybe a journey that began in a half-empty lecture room ends in a half-empty military infirmary. He was alone back then, and he feels alone now, which is dumb. He has friends, colleagues; more colleagues than friends, true. He has Jack. But Jack is in Washington, and they are making do with snatched weekends and stilted, unsatisfying phone calls that never come close to conveying everything that needs to be said.

His body is weak, his resolve weaker still. He really doesn’t know how much longer he can keep putting himself out there only for it to end like this. Time after time after time.

Sha’uri, Kelowna, Janus’s lab … a trifecta of suffering and perceived failure. Funny how he can think only of the failures.

Yes. Maybe this is where it all comes to a shuddering halt.

“You awake?”

Daniel is startled out of his stream of consciousness thinking; not something he generally indulges in, but perhaps the medication is allowing him to take his mind where it wouldn’t normally wander.

“Sadly, yes.”

Jack pushes off from the infirmary wall and saunters across to Daniel’s bed, hands in pockets. For all his affected nonchalance, Daniel sees the give-away tightness in his shoulders.

“I told Lam to tell me when you woke up. I’ll be having words.” Jack pulls a chair from beside the empty bed next to Daniel’s, turns it around and straddles it. Not very general-like, Daniel muses.

“I’ve only just opened my eyes. I’m sure she would have gotten around to it.” Daniel tries to shift himself further up the bed, and a small gasp of pain escapes as he does so.

Jack stands up as though the chair is on fire, and reaches for Daniel, easing a pillow behind his back. Daniel feels a flare of agony as he clenches exhausted, aching muscles against the pain.

“Relax,” Jack says softly into his ear, dry lips brushing his skin in what could be an accidental movement, but Daniel feels as an ache of longing. “Don’t fight it. It’s easier to go with it. Breathe through it.” Jack knows, of course Jack knows how this feels, and a spark of anger at long-past suffering reaches Daniel through his own agony. Jack pushes Daniel gently into the pillow, leaves his hand resting on a shoulder, leaves his thumb stroking there. Daniel is sure he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.

Daniel swallows hard to fight off rising nausea and concentrates on nothing but the feel of the thumb and the comfort it offers. It is a pinpoint of warmth on a body that feels cold and alien and defeated.

He breathes deeply and lets his roiling stomach calm.

It takes a while.

Eventually, he trusts his voice enough to say, “Like I said. Sadly, I’m awake. I’m sure I felt better when I was asleep.”

Daniel wills his body to let go of the pain and sinks gratefully into the bed.

The small movement on his shoulder stops and Daniel misses it immediately. It takes everything he has not to whisper, _“Don’t stop. Please. It helps. I need you to touch me.”_

Jack squeezes his shoulder gently, pats it twice and then he sits down, in a more conventional manner this time, and Daniel has the first chance to look at him properly.

Jack looks … old. Not old-er, which is how he’s come to think of him, of them both lately, but old. His eyes are bleak, his skin pale and the lines around his eyes and mouth are more defined than Daniel has ever seen them.

_I’ve done that to him. Me. Decisions I’ve made have cost him in so many ways. Maybe it really is past time to call a halt to this shit._

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’d lay money on the dreams being worse than the pain.” Jack eyes him thoughtfully, and, for a second, Daniel thinks the man has somehow been inside his head.

“Hey. How bad can dreams of drowning in your own blood and fluids be?” Daniel goes for the insouciant grin. Jack’s mouth tightens and Daniel realizes instantly it’s a mistake to make light of this.

Jack is angry.

“I read about the radiation threat, Daniel. Given your history, it’s not fucking funny.”

Daniel decides to ignore and deflect.

“There are reports? Already?”

“Preliminary, from McKay. Verbal from Woolsey, garbled from Sheppard. I’ll be speaking to all of them. Loudly.”

Daniel sighs. “Jack. Before you set back relations with the Atlantis expedition by years, just think first. Everything would have been fine if … Look, the device activated and it simply set in train a chain of unfortunate events.”

Jack’s eyes narrow and he leans forward, clasped hands clenching on his knees. “If … unfortunate ... This should not have been allowed to happen, Daniel. It was almost disaster on a fucking galactic scale.” His voice is tight with suppressed rage, and Daniel is suddenly afraid Jack will lose it.

He’s only seen it happen once, on K’Tau, with Malchus, the religious fanatic whose actions cost the lives of two members of SG-6. Jack held a gun on him. Only Daniel, standing directly behind him, could see Jack’s finger tighten on the trigger. Daniel will never know if Jack dragged himself back from the brink or if his desperate “Jack!” broke through the red haze.

It was frightening to see that much anger in Jack then; it is killing Daniel to see it now.

Daniel sighs and has to close his eyes against the headache that is threatening to overwhelm him. He pinches the bridge of his nose to ease the ache. It doesn’t work.

Jack reaches up behind Daniel’s head and hits the call button on the wall.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling for …”

“Dr. Jackson?” Dr. Lam reaches Daniel’s bedside and shoots Jack a ‘what are you doing here?’ glare.

Daniel’s “I’m fine” is overlaid by Jack’s “He has a headache.”

Daniel stares at Jack, who stares back. They blink, then, in tandem, turn their gaze on Dr. Lam.

She arches her eyebrows and concentrates on her patient. “Is the headache worse than before?”

Daniel sighs and mentally rains down Abydonian curses on Jack’s head.

“Yes.”

Dr. Lam nods. “Then you’ll take those stronger painkillers now? The ones I offered before but you refused, saying the pain was better than the loss of clarity and feeling of dislocation?”

She is speaking for Jack’s benefit and Daniel knows it.

“Yes.” It comes out resigned.

“Good.” She turns to Jack. “Five minutes. He needs to rest.” Jack resumes his seat, folds his arms, and looks anything but contrite.

She walks away, beckoning a nurse as she goes.

Five minutes. It’s too long to deal with a Jack this angry and not long enough to re-connect and reach out to him.

Time to meet this head-on. Daniel grips the bedcover, and quickly realizes he’s subconsciously holding onto something tangible against the gathering storm.

“So. Wanna tear me a new one now? Because we only have five minutes and I’m kinda exhausted, so I could be asleep in three.”

Jack still isn’t thawing. Fuck. Daniel’s usually defusing things by now.

“Jack. I know you’re angry …”

“Damn straight.”

“But all of this is just a by-product of me doing my job.”

“I know that.”

“No different to any other risk we’ve ever taken. Although, I have to admit, I was hoping for something good to come out of what was ostensibly a research mission. Kind of like the orb, I guess. The one that pinned you to the wall and nearly killed you. I wanted that to be something wonderful, too. Actually, I’m sensing a pattern here. It has to do with repeated fuck-ups and repeated failure.”

“All right, stop it. Right now.” Jack’s face is pinched. He’s tired, worried and Daniel’s pushing him to the limit but can’t stop.

“This time I came within a hair’s breadth of wiping out millions. Well, Rodney and I working together, I guess, although my arrival on Atlantis started it all, so he shouldn’t get to shoulder the worst of the blame. Millions … I’m really stepping up my game.”

“Daniel …”

“So, yes, I can see why you’re angry.”

“No, Daniel. You can’t. Because if you could you wouldn’t be spouting that self-absorbed crap that is doing nothing to hide the horror of what you went through and the fact that you’re about to tell me you’re jacking it all in, by the way.” And something in the way Jack says it pulls Daniel up short, and the wise-ass rejoinder dies unspoken. “And you’re not quitting, and neither am I, because this is the way it is and that’s what we live with. You’re not done with the job and the job’s not done with you. Ditto for me. And I’m not angry with you, or Woolsey or McKay or anyone else.” His voice is flat, his eyes, which are looking anywhere but directly at Daniel, are dark and wary.

Suddenly, his troubled gaze locks with Daniel’s and it’s all there on his face; that beautiful, strong face that Daniel longs to cradle in his hands. Daniel can read Jack like a much-loved book; every wince, every grimace, every frown that isn’t irritation but distress.

“You’re angry with yourself,” Daniel says, softly. And he aches for him, all the more so because he can’t touch him or hold him, or show him that he understands in the most elemental way of all.

“Dr. Jackson?” A young nurse holding a small tray with two pills and a paper cup stands behind Jack. She indicates the tray. “Dr. Lam says you’re to take these and that General O’Neill should leave.” She looks nervous.

Daniel drags his gaze from Jack when he realizes that all he’s feeling is written there for her to see. He smiles at her and is amazed he can make his facial muscles react in the right way.

“Thank you.” He takes the pills and swallows the water. Then he turns his attention back to Jack, who is shifting uncomfortably in the chair.

“Well, this is fun,” Daniel says, shifting in the bed a little, mirroring Jack’s actions. It’s an odd way to show sympathy but not uncommon in their non-verbal realm of communication. A sharp pain flashes through his legs as they protest the movement.

“Not so much.”

Daniel tries wiggling his toes, testing just how far the agony extends. It hurts. He exhales slowly, breathing out the pain and buying himself a little thinking time.

“You have no reason for any self-recrimination,” Daniel eventually offers, keeping his voice lowered. No one else needs to hear of Jack’s manifest insecurities.

“About this mess? Actually, I agree with you. I can’t stop you from going to Atlantis these days… well, OK, maybe I can, but I won’t … no,” Jack leans forward in his seat, rests elbows on his knees and steeples fingers. Classic ‘Thinking Jack.’ “I’m angry because …”

Daniel wonders if he’ll actually say it out loud, put it out there because now he thinks he has an inkling of what this is all about and realizes just what an admission it will be.

Jack’s whole body seems to sag. Then he says, quietly, “Because I should never have gone to Washington. Should never have taken that fucking job.”

Daniel closes his eyes.

There it is. And the thing is, he can’t argue with it. So he treads carefully when he speaks.

“I can’t speak to your professional decisions, Jack. On a personal level, we can live with this, you’re right. But I hate the separation, and I haven’t been able to tell you that until now. I hate the distance it’s put between us, physically, I mean. Emotionally? I deal with it.”

And then treading carefully doesn’t cut it any more. Too much has gone unspoken in recent months. He owes Jack the truth now.

“But I miss you. Every second of every minute of every day.” Daniel tries to keep his voice even, but he hears the crack on the last three words and knows Jack does too.

He opens his eyes to find Jack’s gaze fixed on him, his eyes full of love and regret.

“Me too,” Jack whispers. “I don’t know why I took the job, Daniel. I look back and I can’t remember how I rationalized it all. I just know I was finding it harder and harder to watch you all going through the gate without me. Maybe I was … running away. Trying to ease the permanent ache in my gut.

“Whatever the reasoning … I just … don’t know how to fix this.”

Daniel’s releases his white-knuckle, oh so painful grip on the bedcover and edges his hand towards Jack. It’s dangerous, a risk, but he needs to touch, and Jack needs to feel their connection. Daniel’s fingers are shaking and he wonders if he’s trembling through emotion or pain or tiredness, because he really is fighting sleep now. Lam is sneaky: painkillers laced with muscle relaxant and sedative. Sneaky.

Jack raises his hand and suddenly they’re grasping, clutching, pouring their love into twining fingers. It’s wonderful and not enough, and it’s everything. Daniel could weep from the simple comfort of it.

He doesn’t care who sees; he’s a patient who nearly died being comforted by his closest friend. Move along here. Nothing to see.

Daniel strokes his thumb across their joined hands.

“It’s not broken, Jack. It doesn’t _need_ fixing. We just need to find a way to go on.”

Jack releases his hand when he hears Lam’s footsteps approaching from the corridor.

“We’ll talk,” Jack says, rising from his seat. And Daniel knows they will. He’s never spoken about Kelowna and dying; Jack’s never talked of Washington and loneliness. Maybe it’s not time to say ‘fuck it all.’ Maybe it’s time to say what needs saying and move on from there. Jack shoves his hands in his pockets; habit, or emergency measures so that he won’t give in and squeeze Daniel’s hand or shoulder one last time?

“I’m not going anywhere,” Daniel says ruefully, stifling a yawn.

This time, as he closes his eyes, he hears Jack’s footsteps disappear from the infirmary before sleep takes him.

This time, he doesn’t dream.  



End file.
